What Once We Loved Read online

  Ruth's eyes scanned for the children, the source of the screams. She heard neighing horses and a bellowing bull, then shrieks and groans. Dust filled the air near the barn. Ruth swore later she heard the ripping of flesh, but of course, she couldn't have, not from where she stood, not with the towel about her head. She could see Matthew run, his boots kicking up red dirt near the corral. His face looked strained, and her eyes searched for Jessie and Ned, Jason and Sarah.

  “What is it, Auntie?” Sarah asked, stepping out from the house.

  “I don't know,” Ruth said, moving forward, searching.

  She saw the two youngest out in the meadow now, close together. She wondered why Matthew pushed at them, moved them toward the freighters while one of the Mexican handlers turned a string of mules away from the corrals. The animals bucked and brayed in upset over what? Ruth didn't know.

  Her eyes worked across the meadow. She could see Koda and the mares running into each other. Odd. Then the dusty fog near Marvels pen cleared. Ruth watched as Matthew grabbed a goading stick to push at the big bull. He was loose? The bull was loose? The animals nose lifted to the dusty air. She heard him bellow as though in triumph. Clods of dirt pelted the ground like rain as the brute pawed and twisted raising a red-earth cloud.

  Had Matthew stumbled? She couldn't see! When it cleared, the bull lowered his head, his horns angled to attack. Her heart pounded. She heard a crack, wood against flesh, and Marvels bellow. That high-pitched scream again. Matthews goading stick lunged, and the animal moved back, the ground throbbing with his agitated weight. The brute was so large, and yet he twisted with the ease of a dog snapping at meat thrown in midair. Matthew shouted. The brute circled, disappeared inside the dirty cloud.

  When it cleared, the bull was in the pen next to his own, and Matthew rushed forward to slide the oak latch. The animal pawed, head lowered. He bellowed but didn't lunge the gate.

  Good, Ruth thought. He was back in. Everyone was all right. But what was that screaming, that— She stepped forward, barefooted, onto the warm earth and moved as though sleepwalking toward the corral, aware that her body knew something her mind would not admit.

  “Ruth, stay back!” Matthew shouted to her now, his palms extended, his hat held as though to shield her eyes.

  “Why? What s wrong?”

  And then her eyes slid down to the lurching form just inside the log corrals, the struggling sorrel form of Jumper.

  The horse lay groaning, snorting, a muffled scream now, weakened. His head lifted, then dropped. His hooves carved graves into the dust. She let her eyes move like sunset sinking, threatening blackness. She smelled the acrid scent of blood, of seeping life, heard the bellowing of the cow brute, long horns held high as he circled the paddock, heightened too by the smells, the sounds of groans and dying.

  “Ruth, please…” Matthew said as she neared him. He grasped her arms, urging her to stay back. “The bull… it s gored him in the… artery…”

  “I've got to,” Ruth said, her voice far away and aching like a dream lost to the morning. She shook free of Matthews hand.

  “He could be…could hurt you. Not meaning too. I'll put him down, Ruth. No need—”

  But she was already beside the stud, sobbing now, a deep and awful bawling broken by gasps of choked air like a child exhaling in anguish with her loss. Then she met his eyes, her Jumper's eyes. Her grieving must have frightened the stallion as he lay in the pool of blood, red and black beneath his belly, the horn-rip of his belly, gaping like fresh meat, laid bare. A shiver of horror swelled through her in a raging wave. Eyes wild and staring, the horse tried to rise when he saw her, as if he longed for her to take the pain, to set him free.

  She bent to his big head, barely touched his jaw and his ears twitched back, the pain so great. Her eyes throbbed with the knowing. She pulled the towel from her head, tried to push it against the blood flow.

  “Let me,” Matthew said. Ruth couldn't answer. Matthew held the towel to the horse s sheath but was unable to stop the bleeding. The big horse tried once more to rise, to lift his head with a gasping snort.

  Ruth wept into Jumper's neck, a selfish moment taken before she'd free him: have to free him.

  But even in his dying, the big horse gave. Jumper strained his neck, tried to lift his head as she crooned to him, “No, no, stay still, stay still,” until he seemed to sigh, his legs no longer scraping, the screams of pain lessened. His breaths came shorter. His nostrils moved in and out; his heaving slowed. His eyes wide with fright, he sighed once more, then died.

  Ruth stayed with him that way, wrapped around his neck until she felt only brittle cold. She stayed until the moon came up, until the stars filled the night sky like distant, dying fires. She stayed until she felt the blanket Matthew draped around her shoulders while he sat beside her in silence, while she said good-bye to a dream and what once she'd loved.

  2

  Sacramento City

  “But what good will it do to teach him finger signs?” Suzanne Cullver asked. “I can't see them, or haven't you noticed, Doctor?” She spoke his title with the disrespect he deserved. She should have gone to a dentist or one of those hydropaths instead of this quack. She knew her face burned red with frustration. “I won't know what my son wants if he did use those…those things you said. And I'll have to have someone teach them to me as well, just to be able to tell him things. Which makes no sense. He can understand, he just can't say anything back. No, there has to be another way.”

  Her voice sounded strident, irritated. Well, she was. She'd done what she thought she was supposed to do, surrendered to uncertainty more than at any other time in her life, trusting that freedom thrived inside. No more putting her children at risk just because she wanted to do things by herself. No more singing or making music in the mining towns, no more taking risks without focus. Suzanne shook her head. Focus. It was still a strange word to pop into the head of a blind woman even if she had once been a photographer who knew the meaning of the word quite well. But it didn't just mean clarity; it meant hearth, that which warmed a person to the center of their being. Suzanne's focus was her children, pure and simple. That was what warmed her.

  What this doctor suggested was pure foolery.

  “Maybe I could teach you,” her friend Esty Williams told her, taking Suzanne's hand from the place her fingers fluttered at her neck. Esty covered Suzanne's fingers with her own. “Is there a book of some kind?” Esty must have turned to face the doctor, her voice seemed directed away from Suzanne.

  “The Indians use some gesticulation, of course,” the doctor said, clearing his throat. “These have not been written down, but remembered. For the military. I can make a list of several if you'd like, with drawings. Nothing elaborate. The child is only three. But it could reduce his…frustration when he wishes to tell someone something but can't make himself understood. You can make up little signs, of course. Be…inventive.” The doctor had leaned close enough to Suzanne that she could smell the herb santolina on his wool jacket. He must have used it to keep the moths down. Or perhaps he'd expelled so many worms from young patients with it that the scent was forever on his skin.

  “But he never will talk if we give him a way to avoid it,” Suzanne said. “No. I think it will divert us from finding out why he refuses to speak.” She pulled her hand from Esty's, clasped her own together in a prayerlike position. Took a deep breath. “Is his mouth all right? Are his teeth formed so he can talk?”

  “Everything appears to be physically as it should be,” the doctor said, his words clipped like a man patting a pestering dog.

  “But you're not a dentist, after all.”

  “The signs could perhaps help teach him to talk, in a way we just don't understand. I've seen it happen.”

  He'd probably taken up medicine when his interest in farming or horse racing ran out. The thought made her ask a question. “Do you think that accident with the horse last year could have caused this, when the animal kicked him in the side of the
head? Or losing his father to cholera—could that have frightened him into silence?”

  “It is futile to seek the cause, to lay blame,” the doctor pronounced.

  “You haven't anything to lose by trying this, Suzanne,” Esty said softly.

  “Of course you don't, my dear,” the doctor said. “Nothing at all. See here. Clayton,” he called the boy. “Clayton, look at me now. Would you like more water? Yes? Good boy for nodding yes. And here is how to tell me more.

  Suzanne waited in the silence, her heart pounding with the reminder of what she could not do for herself. Then she heard her son giggle. “Oh, look at that,” the doctor laughed now. “He's pointed to the dish of sweets and made the sign, Mrs. CuUver. He learns quickly.” He paused. “He's a handsome child. Favors you with his towhead.” He cleared his throat.

  “Did he, Esty?” Suzanne said. “Did he use the sign?”

  “He put his little hands into a ball with his fingertips pointing together, Suzanne,” Esty said. “Oh, and look, Sason just did it too!”

  “My baby?”

  “I'll make inquiries among my colleagues to see if there are others who could assist us in further…diagnosis, Mrs. CuUver. Meanwhile, a sign for ‘help' might be of use. Or one for ‘eat.' I'll draw a picture for Miss Williams here—”

  “We have a Wintu friend,” Suzanne said. “I'm sure she can show us. We don't need anything more from here.”

  “Oh, well, of course,” he said as Suzanne stood, “though I assure you—”

  “Come, Clayton. Take Esty's hand now. And you have Sason, too?” Esty tapped her hand and placed it over Suzanne's cane as they rose to leave.

  Suzanne stepped out into the Sacramento air, breathing a sigh of relief as she heard the door latch behind them. Her dog, Pig, stood up, and she reached for his stiff leather harness and followed him down the steps.

  In the carriage, Suzanne listened to the clop-clop of the horses and let it soothe her. The stage trip south had been a backbreaking journey, and Suzanne had arrived tired and the children cranky and the dog barking, barking at this fabulous city still recovering from floods and fires of the year before. But she'd been determined to seek help here for her son. To accept help.

  Suzanne sighed as she listened to carriage sounds, tried to identify the scents of trees, cooking fires, even the hog pens they passed. Esther had been a dear to find the doctor with whom they'd spent the morning discussing Clayton. The specialist was said to work well with children who were slow. How would she explain to Sister Esther that the man was a finger-talking quack!

  “Mommy!” Clayton said. He struck his mother in the arm, forcing Suzanne to the present.

  “Clayton. Stop that!” He could startle her so, coming at her that way. And he was strong for someone so small. “Mommy. Mommy,” he chanted, punching her with his tiny fists. She grabbed at his hands and held them in her own. He started to wail, bounced against her and kicked.

  “Clayton! Cease!” Suzanne said.

  Esty must have found something to distract him for he quieted, even the bells on his shoes stopped tinkling for a moment. He still let Suzanne hold his hands. “Do you really think the signs the doctor suggested make sense?” Suzanne asked Esty as they jostled about in the buggy.

  “What can it hurt? Oltipa can show us a few.”

  “I'm afraid…well, that people will think he isn't…all there,” Suzanne said, finally naming the fear riding the doctor's suggestion. “I remember a man back in Michigan who couldn't speak or hear, and people were wretched to him. But his eyes had such light in them I always thought he could understand. Do Clayton's eyes have that light?” Suzanne asked.

  “They do,” her friend told her, patting her hand.

  Suzanne sighed. “Sister Esther will have to know too. And anyone he's with. Oh, if we could just find out why he's this way and fix it. I just want to get things tended.” Suzanne kissed the knuckles of her sons hands. “And everyone will know now that I haven't.”

  “They already know,” Esty told her.

  “That I'm a failure? Why did they tell me to stop worrying then?”

  “They know that he has something wrong, not that there's anything wrong with you. They just don't know what they can do to help. At least the signs are something. And it will show us if Clayton can locate sighted people to ask for help. It takes intelligence to do that.”

  “Sighted people. Yes,” Suzanne said. “Sighted people. Not his mother.”

  She turned her face away. She couldn't see through them, but her eyes could betray her with unexpected tears. She knew this had to be, this having to rely on others at so many levels of being a mother, a widow, a woman. It pained her. The boy beside her must have sensed something as he jerked his hands free, stood up, and touched her face. “Mommy,” he told her, the only word she'd heard him say in months.

  “Yes. Mommy.” She pulled the boy to her, then kissed the top of his head. She patted his little arm. And then he did the strangest thing. First, he hit her shoulder as he had before, then he lifted her hands from the cane across her lap. He placed them like two cups, pushing the fingertips together.

  “He's showing you the sign,” Esty said. “For more!”

  “Is he?”

  “What had you done? Do it again,” Esty said.

  Suzanne thought. Stopping him from hitting her? The kiss? The hug? She reached out for him. “Let me hold you,” she said, and he melted into her, then turned so his back nestled against her breast. She kissed the top of his head. “Let me hold my boy,” she said. He made the sign for more then, her arms still wrapped around him, and she felt him nod and grunt, then she kissed his head again. The dog panted and yipped. “He's making that sign, Suzanne. And he's smiling. But no bigger than you.”

  Crescent City, on the California Coast

  The salt spray forced Tipton Wilson Kossuth to pull the shawl tighter around her slender shoulders. Sunset usually promised a wind and a chill, but she didn't want to go inside just yet. The ball of red sinking on the horizon still felt warm against her face, and she found she could think more clearly at the shore.

  Nehemiah, her husband, was a good man. Everyone said so. So she didn't know why this recent request annoyed her so. He rarely asked a thing of her that wasn't reasonable. Maybe that was it. He was always so…reasonable, telling her things “for her own good” as though his sixteen more years of living gave him some superior right to tell her what to expect, how to behave. Her mother was always telling her what to do. Her brother, Charles, gave his advice freely, when she couldn't avoid his presence. Now she had a husband who thought it his duty to educate her mind and soul…and body. She shoved that thought aside. She would be seventeen in less than a month. She guessed she knew a few things about living, about how a young wife was supposed to behave.

  She bent to pick up a clear stone. An agate. She'd have one of her own to show him. He'd like that, though she supposed he knew about this beach full of them. He was always talking about the pretty rocks he picked up on his journey inland to Oregon when he brought supplies for the mining communities growing there. “An entire agate desert lies in the shadow of two strange land formations people in Jacksonville call Table Rocks.”

  Some days she felt as though she lived in a desert too, nothing more than a shiny object her husband polished toward perfection. At least Tipton had made her mother happy. Tipton sniffed. Her mother would say she'd made a good marriage with a man both kind and aspiring. Hadn't he recovered his assets after being wiped out by a fire? Hadn't he already arranged financing for warehouses that stocked his pack string? And he spoke more openly now about running for political office. Everyone Tipton met said he should. They needed a good representative from this northern end of Klamath County. And everyone treated the Kossuths as though they'd always belonged at this far reach of the world shadowed by transport and timber.

  So what was wrong with her? She quickened her pace, her linsey-woolsey skirt whipping around her high-top boots. Tipton glan
ced toward the shore. No Indians. Nehemiah warned her that the Takelmas and Klamaths and other bands weren't as friendly as those who had helped them on their journey across from Wisconsin to California. Little sandpipers quickstepped against the foam that left a line as thin as lace against the sand. It was hard to keep everything straight in a new place. She didn't like the strong winds or the sudden weather changes either, changes that could take a dark, distant skyline to the heavy fog.

  Sometimes the fog stayed out there, something she could see but didn't feel at all. Other times, it moved in to cover the land the way laudanum crept over her when she took it to soothe a hurt. She knew it would arrive to make the world hazy and slow, just not when or for how long.

  She'd told Nehemiah about the ocean storms, especially the fog and how it chilled her, made her want to sink inside the cabin and stay a month.

  “I'd have thought someone with such dramatic inclinations would enjoy the vagaries of the ocean,” Nehemiah told her, “being so similar in temperament.” Her husband was gentle in his saying of it, held her to him with one big arm as their boots sank in the sand. But his words still wounded. She wasn't “dramatic” as he implied and certainly not as changeable or as impulsive as his word “vagaries” suggested. She'd had to look that up in the dictionary he'd purchased. She'd been surprised he used a word meaning “odd” or “whimsical” to describe her personality. Sometimes she wondered if Nehemiah did that sort of thing on purpose, to make her feel young and inexperienced, as though she was his student and he always the teacher.

  As Tipton saw it, Nehemiah was the one who demonstrated vagary ways like the weather, not her. His marriage proposal had come the same day as the fire that wiped out Shasta City, and they'd left to begin a new life the day after their wedding. The memory of her mother's betrayal that day, strong. She pushed it from her mind.